Juggling across levels: How political parties shape London’s multi-level, multi-issue environmental transformation

In 2005, London convened a meeting of 18 megacities to launch the global C40 climate initiative. By 2017, the city’s greenhouse gas emissions had fallen by 40% from peak levels, despite a 30% population increase. Yet, such apparent successes are only part of the story. For example, greenhouse gas emissions from the city’s six major airports are not counted within its climate figures. Meanwhile, London’s responses to other environmental challenges, particularly local environmental issues, such as air pollution, have long been remedial, creating an urgent health crisis. This multi-issue challenge is rendered more complex – but not necessarily more difficult – by London’s scale and population density as a global megacity that is governed across multiple levels. To date, academic studies of multi-level governance have focused upon the European Union and its member states, or upon states within federal countries. There is a gap in current research as to how parties engage with multiple challenges, and across multiple levels, within individual cities. As such, we ask: how do political parties in London shape the city’s complex multi-level and multi-issue environmental transformation? Drawing from and contributing to the literatures on political parties, multi-level governance and policy experimentation, we trace parties’ engagement with environmental issues in the city over time. To do so, we create an original dataset to analyse how parties influence environmental action at the London Assembly level, particularly within the Environment, Budget, and Transport Committees, as well as across the 32 local authority ‘boroughs’ within London. We seek to develop existing understandings of the strategies, priorities and effectiveness of parties within multi-level city contexts, and the challenges of addressing multiple, potentially conflictual, environmental issues at once.